The second day of the Consultation began at 9.45 a.m, with presentations by Niladri Shekhar Dhar and Subhajit Patra on labour absorption and employment in the three study villages. Arindam Das presented a paper by Yoshifumi Usami on the contribution of the employment guarantee scheme to rural households. It contrasted the performance of the programme in Tripura with the all-India experience, highlighting the importance of the progamme in sustaining household incomes in rural Tripura. Arindam Das further spoke on prevalent wage rates and on the wage earnings of manual workers in the villages surveyed, with a special focus on male-female wage differentials.

The second session of the day was on landholdings and asset ownership in the three villages of Tripura. Ritam Dutta, with Ranjini Basu and Jharna Debbarma, made a presentation on the different types of landholdings that were covered by the village surveys and explained the complex forms that land rights take in the study villages. Ritam also explained the workig of a lottery-based system for assigning land for jhoom cultivation in Khakchang village. Ranjini Basu focused on asset ownership patterns in the three villages in Tripura, analysing both the relatively low levels of inequality and the relatively ow levels of household assets in the villages, particularly in Khankchang.

The afternoon session was on living standards. Sanjukta Chakraborty’s presentation on school education highlighted the success that the State has achieved in expanding the reach of education among men and women. Rakesh Kumar Mahato presented data onthe state of housing and basic amenities, including safe drinking water, electricity, and functioning lavatories, in the study villages. He highlighted the achievements of the administration of Tripura in ensuring the delivery of services like electricity and drinking water, to even the remote villages of the state. At the same time, it was clear that Tripura still has far to go to achieve fully satisfactory housing for all.

The concluding session of the day was dedicated to a discussion on all the presentations that were made during the two days. The session was chaired by V K Ramachandran and Narayan Kar. Ramachandran in re-emphasized the need to strike a balance between celebrating the achievements of the State in establishing a very specific path of development for its people, and working to upgrade and modernise the level of development of the productive forces in the countryside. Narayan Kar commended the research and the efforts that went in to the presentations at the Consultation. He also suggested some areas for further study.
A team from the Foundation is now revisiting the three villages, and the team will certainly investigate some of the issues raised.

We now look forward to using the results of the Consultation and the results from the re-visits to the villages to write the final report.